Normally, Olympic Tennis doesn’t draw much attention but this year, there are some significant stories..
This Olympic Games will see the likely career endings of 3 of the greatest players to grace the game. Andy Murray, the 3-time major winner will certainly retire after competing in the doubles for Great Britain while Rafael Nadal, due to play singles and doubles (with Carlos Alcaraz) is very likely to call it a day after a fitting finale on the clay courts of Paris. Angelique Kerber, another 3 time major champion and former world number one will retire from the women’s circuit after the Games. But what are their chances of medal success? Let’s take a look at the rules, the draw and the contenders..
THE RULES
Olympic tennis tournaments follow the same rules as most tennis tournaments; best of 3 sets with a tie-break at the end if necessary. Countries are allowed to have 12 representatives across 5 competitions consisting of Men’s Singles, Women’s Singles, Men’s Doubles, Women’s Doubles and Mixed Doubles. Each competition is a knockout competition as per normal tennis tournaments. There are 64 players in the Men’s and Women’s Singles events meaning a player must win 6 consecutive matches to win the gold medal. The losing finalist will receive the silver medal while the losing semi-finalists will play each other to determine the bronze medal winner.
THE DRAW AND CONTENDERS
The official draw took place on 25th July 2024 with 16 assigned seeds. Seeds will not get a first round bye in the Olympic Games.
Without doubt the most interesting story to come out of the draw was the possibility of a match between Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal as early as the second round. While Djokovic has been drawn against Australian Matthew Ebden, Nadal has the trickier task of beating Hungarian Martin Fucsovics. Luckily for Rafa, Fucsovics seems to be in terrible form currently having hurt his wrist back in May and hasn’t won in 5 attempts. Having said that, there are also rumours that Nadal missed training on the just yesterday (Thursday) due to a setback in training.
Though Nadal has superiority over Djokovic on clay, I can’t imagine that Nadal could compete with a fit Djokovic at this stage of his recovery, but I hope it happens! Neither player should go out in round one.
The same quarter of the draw sees Greek player Stefanos Tsitsipas take on Zizu Bergs of Belgium while Milos Raonic will represent Canada one last time and plays Dominic Koepfer in the first round.
The second quarter is led by third seed Alexander Zverev who will play Spanish representative Jaume Munar. Stan ‘The Man’ Wawrinka represents Switzerland with pride in his 5th Olympic Games. Stan has won just one Olympic medal which came back in 2008 when he won the Men’s Doubles with none other than the great Roger Federer. Stan will open his account against Russian Pavel Kotov. Perhaps the stand-out match in this group, especially from the French point of view, is crowd favourite Gael Monfils who will play in-form Italian Lorenzo Musetti. Back in May, the French crowd were deemed ‘rowdy’ and ‘raucous’ by players and media. I can’t imagine the noise this time, in the red-hot atmosphere of the Olympic Games, when Monfils, Fils or Humbert take to the court. It should be an incredible site to see and hear.
Daniil Medvedev of Russia is the 4th seed and will play Australian Rinky Hijikata in the opening round. Other seeds in this quarter include Casper Ruud representing Norway, Ugo Humbert of France and Felix Auger Aliassime of Canada. Aliassime has a tricky task of overcoming American Marcos Giron while Humbert will have to get through Fabian Marozsan of Hungary. This will not be an easy quarter to call as it also has clay court specialists like Francisco Cerundolo of Argentina and Pedro Martinez of Spain who are always capable of a few shock results.
The final quarter does not lack quality with Wimbledon and French Open Champion Carlos Alcaraz leading the charge. He opens up against Hady Habib of Lebanon and will then meet Cameron Norrie of Great Britain or Tallon Griekspoor of The Netherlands. Australian De Minaur is the top contender to meet Alcaraz in the quarter final if he can beat Jan Lennard Struff of Germany in the first round and Tommy Paul of the USA or Luciano Darderi of Italy in the last 16.
Overall, this Olympic tennis tournament is one of the best quality fields in Olympic history so let’s hope for some more great moments and maybe a great underdog story to emerge.
Thanks for reading.
Patrick.